Cruising preparations

No matter how much you think your boat is ready, preparing to cruise brings a long list of needed improvements.  We are about depart on a trip in celebration of our yacht club's centennial season, and it's the first long cruise we've done in 23 years.  Some things needed to be checked!
I don't row our inflatable as well as I used to row the Dyer dinghy, so I acquired an 8-horse motor several years ago.  We would travel on short hops from harbor to harbor, towing the rubber duck and its motor behind us.
As I planned our travel from port to port, I realized that the tow could be an annoying drag in the steep chop of Buzzards Bay, and a real hazard in tidal sluices like Wood's Hole.  Therefore I plan to travel with the motor off and the inflatable stowed below.  
I then realized how hard it wold be to swing the dinghy outboard to the deck while we're rolling at a mooring.  Finally, I observed that the outboard would interfere with our mizzen if I mounted it on the push pit like everyone else does.  
Consequently, I designed and constructed a deck cradle for the motor, and worked out a procedure for hoisting and rotating it with the mizzen boom.  For many years, I've been worrying about this, but the cruise focused me on the problem.
BJ and I practiced the procedure for dismount, hoist and stow while we were at the dock last weekend.  She was impressed with how smoothly it went, and she is rarely so taken with one of my inventions.
New technology has finally come to Search and Rescue in New England, so the Coast Guard's Rescue 21 equipment has been  deployed.  This means that if one registers one's VHF radio, and installs a link from a GPS to the radio, one can send a Mayday message with our instantaneous location at the push of a red "Distress" button.  The nearest Coast Guard facility will, we hope, hear and respond directly to our location.  I designed and installed the necessary wiring changes to feed the data using the NMEA 0183 wires and protocol.
Also, the Automatic Identification System (AIS) hardware is now available at reasonable prices for those who are are not compelled to carry it.  I bought a Raymarine AIS-650 and installed it to pass data to our multi-function Raymarine chartplotter.
The new AIS is only set up as a receiver of AIS messages, because installing it as an active transmitter of our track and vector requires disabling the GPS we have used for ten years, in favor of the purportedly better machine integrated into the AIS-650 itself.  I didn't want to risk our GPS distribution. just before leaving.
The data realignment required reworking the entire NMEA 0183 wiring on the boat.  We use it for passing heading data to the radar display, compass information to the autopilot, GPS information to the plotter, and location to the VHF radio.  I am hoping that all will work correctly as we head over our horizon.  I can test everything but the autopilot, and that is somewhat of a worry.